Assessment of industrial enterprises' sustainable development: analysis of methods

Successful functioning of an enterprise under market conditions is impossible without its sustainable development; formation of the mechanism of sustainable development requires a comprehensive assessment of the enterprise activity, identifying trends of its development and dynamics of the main indicators. Complex consideration of social, economic and environmental performance of companies has already become a recognized trend in science and practice. However, many problems of sustainable development remain beyond the bounds of research, and there is still a lack of consensus on some categories, such as «sustainability», «development», and many others. To date, there are also no common methodological tools for assessing sustainable development, which can be explained, first, by the complexity of the concept of sustainable development itself (economical, ecological, and social aspects), second, by the difference of views on the problem (from scientific to political), and third, by the nature of the problem being solved (its scale, purpose, object of study, etc.). This article is devoted to the analytical study of the current methodological approaches to assessment of industrial enterprises' sustainable development. The authors examine the features, advantages and disadvantages of methods offered by today's scientists. The results of this study extend theoretical approaches to formation and implementation of the assessment mechanism through combination of statistical and dynamic approaches. This complex approach will allow us not only to comprehensively assess the degree of sustainable development, but also to confirm or refute the results obtained using only either static or dynamic approach.